


more than you bargained for

by returnsandreturns



Category: New Girl
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Pretending to Be Gay, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-03-14 14:47:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3414659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returnsandreturns/pseuds/returnsandreturns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Well,” Schmidt says, “Nick’s certainly not a twink.”</p><p>“You’re right I’m not,” Nick says. “I’m butch. I’m like a damn lumberjack.”</p><p>“Butch is lesbians,” Winston says.</p><p>“Butch is <i>lesbians</i>?” Nick repeats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SORRY FOR THE WIP, this has been on my computer forever and I'm hoping posting it will spur me to finish writing it. Set somewhere within the last few episodes, disregarding some canon.

It mostly starts when Nick starts to find size small t-shirts in his laundry, in colors he would never wear, like yellow and, also, rainbow. He asks Schmidt first because Schmidt is still a little shaky on doing his own laundry and sometimes Nick will mysteriously find one of his sweaters with the fancy necks among his load.

(“Cow necks?” Nick says, pulling a face.

“ _Cowl_  necks, Nicholas,” Schmidt repeats. “Dear god.”)

“What is this?” Schmidt asks. “Old Navy? Who do you think I am?”

“What’s wrong with Old Navy?” Nick asks.

“I don’t deal with cheaply produced substandard fabrics,” Schmidt replies. “I care about my body too much. You should probably check with _Jess_. She’s. . .thrifty.”

“She _is_ thrifty,” Nick says, even though Schmidt says it like it’s a horrible curse word.

“Besides, I don’t wear a small,” Schmidt continues. “I’m a healthy medium. A. . .a _bulging_ medium.”

“I don’t want to hear about your bulging, man,” Nick says, frowning at him before taking the shirts back and heading for Jess’s room. He almost forgets to knock, but that’s something that he has to do now, since they’re no longer dating and thus have to worry about accidentally seeing each other naked again. Jess takes a few seconds to open the door, and, when she does, her hands are covered with glitter and she has strings of hot glue in her hair.

She shimmies a little and sings, “ _Jess’s Weekly Craft Bonanza_!” as way of explanation.

“Ah, right,” Nick says. “Did you ever finish that collage?”

“Anderson Cooper’s face out of old National Geographic pictures?” Jess asks, then when Nick nods: “No. I just couldn’t pick the right ocean color for his eyes, you know?”

 “I mean, what ocean could compare, right?” Nick agrees, because it’s okay to be straight and still think that Anderson Cooper is handsome—just in an aesthetic way. Like art. Like sexy male art.

“So, what can I do you for?” Jess asks, wiping her hands aimlessly on her skirt, so the glitter scatters and falls all around their feet.

“Oh, yeah,” Nick says, then holds up the t-shirts. “Are these yours?”

Jess looks panicked for a split second before she puts on her cool face and says, “Uh, no, but those are some cool shirts. You should definitely take them for yourself.”

Nick squints at her.

“. . .Jessica. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Jess says, making a _pffft_  noise. “Except the fashion fairy leaving you those kickass t-shirts. Don’t look a shirt horse in the mouth, Nick. Pop one of those bad boys on, see how it feels.”

Nick squints a little longer.

“Is this a sex thing?” he asks.

“No!” Jess says, then pauses: “Well. . .kind of?”

“ _Kind of?”_

“OKAY, I NEED YOU TO BE GAY NICK AGAIN,” Jess yells. “I WAS TRYING TO BREAK IT TO YOU SLOWLY VIA TIGHT MUSCLE T-SHIRTS.”

Because Jess’s voice reaches an insane octave when she yells, it draws the rest of their roommates out into the hallway, looking concerned.

“Soooo,” Coach says. “What’s, uh. . .what’s going on with you two?”

“Roommate meeting,” Nick says. “Two minutes.”

 

*

 

“So,” Jess says, when they’re all gathered in the living room. She takes a deep breath before launching into her explanation: “I might have let it slip to Ryan, my adorable British beau, that Nick and I are exes. And then he did this thing with his eyebrows that I’m pretty sure was like morse code for ‘this is too complicated,’ so I kind of shouted something about how it wasn’t a big deal or anything because Nick was too busy having gay sex for it to be awkward.”

They all nod. This is just normal, now. In the last two minutes, Nick has resigned himself to this happening again, because life can’t get much weirder.

“Which is why I need Gay Nick back,” Jess continues, “except better this time.”

“Stronger, faster,” Schmidt intones, wisely, “and much, much gayer.”

“Hey, I think I did pretty good, all things considered,” Nick protests.

“All things meaning you sleeping with a woman,” Schmidt shoots back. “The exact opposite of what you needed to do.”

“Yeah, Nick,” Coach says, smiling. “This time you need to sleep with a man.”

He’s joking, but Jess’s face lights up. In, like, an evil way.

“That’s not bad,” she says, steepling her fingers and smiling like a cartoon villian. “That’s not bad at all.”

“I’m not sleeping with a dude just so you can sleep with a dude,” Nick says, firmly.

“You don’t have to sleep with a dude,” Jess replies, rolling her eyes. “You just have to pretend to. And we have three handsome, eligible bachelors right in front of us.”

She sweeps a hand around to gesture to the rest of them, and they all shift away. Nick is about to get offended when suddenly Winston and Coach are both shouting, “NOSE GOES,” and touching their noses. Schmidt whips around to gape at them.

“Whatever,” he says, eventually, looking Nick up and down for a long moment. “I guess I’ll take one for the team.”

“Yeah, you will,” Coach says, laughing, and Winston high-fives him. Jess looks pleased, which makes Nick feel a little better about the sinking rock sensation in the pit of his stomach, the same one he got when he had to kiss Schmidt last time—post all the Fredo kisses. It’s just stage nerves, anyway.

“Okay, now we’re cooking,” Jess says, leaping to her feet. “We’ve  just got to prepare. I’m going to make some charts!”

She runs from the room, leaving Winston and Coach smiling earnestly at Schmidt and Nick.

“We’ll just leave you two lovebirds alone,” Winston says, and they do, dodging the remote control that Nick throws after them.

Schmidt gives Nick another appraising look.

“I guess this is happening,” he says, eventually, and Nick sighs.

“I guess so, buddy.”

From her room, they can hear Jess singing, “ _Gotta make a pie chart! Then maybe an actual pie! ‘cause pie charts make me hungry! Hungry like the woooooolf!_ ”

“. . .do you floss?” Schmidt asks, slowly. “Like, ever?”

Nick puts his head in his hands, because Schmidt is thinking about kissing him with tongue and now he is thinking about the same thing.

“Nobody actually flosses,” he says, into his fingers. “That’s a myth perpetuated by the dentist-industrial complex to steal our money.”

“Oh, god,” Schmidt whispers.

 

*

 

When they reconvene the next day, Jess has puppets. They’re cute and scrappy and Nick is pretty sure she stayed up all night making them out of felt and her insanely large collection of googly eyes. She also wields them with a fervor, gesturing wildly and refusing to let anybody else touch them.

“I’ve prepared a small PowerPoint presentation,” she says, one hand inside a wolf puppet and the other messing with the cable that’s hooking her laptop up to the TV. PowerPoint pops up onto the screen and Coach leans forward to read something.

“150 slides?” he says, then shakes his head. “Girl, I don’t think so.”

“We’ll breeze right through it,” Jess says, cheerily slipping her other hand into a bear puppet and waving it gently through the air.

“Is this why you’re a principal now?” Coach asks. “Because the kids revolted?”

“How To Be a Gay Man,” Jess announces, grandly, ignoring him. “A presentation by Jessica Day.”

The first slide is a picture of Anderson Cooper, winking and holding a puppy.

“You can’t start them in the Ivy League, Jess,” Winston says, knowingly. “We’re far from Cooper territory here.”

Jess nods and moves to the next slide, which is a painting of some naked guys.

“I thought we’d begin with some gay history—or _gaystory_ —starting with a little Greek mythology and working our way towards modern times,” she says, and then Coach makes a strangled noise and jerks forward to pull the cable out of the TV. Jess looks outraged. Nobody else in the apartment would ever have the balls to interrupt one of her presentations, not after that time she gave them all the silent treatment for the entire month of March, but teaching has changed Coach. He’s way more crazy now.

“Alright, I’ve got a gay brother who likes to give a little too much detail, so I’ll lay down the basics here,” Coach says. “You’ve got your mine types: your twinks, your bears, your cubs, your jocks, and your wolves.”

“I have—I made _puppets_ ,” Jess says, sadly.

“We’re men,” Coach says. “We don’t need puppets.”

“Well,” Schmidt says, “Nick’s certainly not a twink.”

“You’re right I’m not,” Nick says. “I’m butch. I’m like a damn lumberjack.”

“Butch is lesbians,” Winston says.

“Butch is _lesbians?_ ” Nick repeats. “Butch Cassidy was not a lesbian. He was a man’s man. Butch. . .okay, I don’t know any other Butches. This wasn’t a list. Butch Cassidy.”

“Well, you’re not burly enough to be a bear,” Jess says.

“I think with Nick’s chubby physique but generally small size, he’d probably best qualify as a _cub_ ,” Coach says. “Like a teddy bear.”

“That’s _adorable_ ,” Jess says, turning to grin at Nick.

“I don’t like this conversation at all,” Nick says. “Just for the record.”

“Okay, okay,” Schmidt cuts in, a little too eagerly in Nick’s opinion. “What am I?”

Everybody except Nick kind of leans in to look at Schmidt, like they don’t already know what he looks like. There’s a long pause before Jess turns to Coach and asks, “Is there a gay word for, like. . .Jewish princess?”

“Damn it, Jess,” Schmidt cries, standing up and tugging at his shirt. “I’m clearly a jock. Look at my abs.”

“Hey, hey,” Nick says. “Keep your clothes on.”

“That is not the spirit we need from you, Nick,” Winston says.

“Yeah, he’s right, you’ve got to be pro-abs,” Jess says. “I hate to say it, Schmidt, but. . .please take your shirt off.”

Schmidt’s shirt is gone in, like, two seconds. He’s way too good at that. Nick frowns at his bare torso.

“What the internet is telling me,” Winston continues, not looking up from his phone, “is that it’s important to distinguish who is the top and who is the bottom in a relationship. Meaning, of course, who is responsible for the, if I may, penetration.”

“You may not,” Coach says.

“Jess?” Winston asks. “Would you say Nick is a top or a bottom?”

“Oh, bottom,” Jess says, laughing. She lifts her hand up to accept a high five from Coach.

“Hey, I did all the penet—okay, I don’t like that word, but I was that person!” Nick says.

“ _All_  the penetration?” Jess asks, raising her eyebrows. Nick gasps.

“WHAT HAPPENS IN MEXICO STAYS IN MEXICO, JESS.”

“Alright, so Nick’s the bottom,” Schmidt says, gesturing to himself, “because clearly I’m a top.”

“Ehhh,” Coach says. “I don’t know about that.”

Before Schmidt can get anything more than an outraged noise out, Jess is holding her phone up so they can all hear the dial tone and Cece’s voice when she says, “Hey, Jess.”

“Hi, Cece, would you consider Schmidt a top or a bottom?” Jess asks.

Cece laughs for a really long time before she says, between gasps, “Schmidt’s the bottomest bottom to ever bottom.”

“Ce _celia_ ,” Schmidt hisses. He looks almost genuinely upset. Nick leans over to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder.

Jess hangs up, saying, “It seems like maybe we have a case where you’d switch who was, uh. . .’in charge’. What does the internet say about that situation, Winston?”

They all turn to Winston, who doesn’t reply. He’s still looking at his phone intently, head angled slightly to the left. Jess says, again, “. . .Winston?”

“Hi, Jess,” Winston says, quietly, not looking up. “I seem to have got myself into a bit of a gay porn vortex here.”

“Alright, pal,” Jess says. “You want to go to your room?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Winston says, crawling over the back of the sofa and walking to his room with his phone held out in front of him. There’s a long silence after he shuts his door.

“Well,” Coach says, “that’s happening.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tiny update: Schmidt interrupts him, saying like he’s been thinking about it for awhile now, “So, the thing about Nick is that if he were a girl, I would not date him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little tiny update to prove I'm still alive and someday this story will be complete

“Hey, Winston,” Jess says, hitting her knuckles gently against Winston’s door. “We’re gonna watch gay movies on Netflix. Want to join us?”

There’s a weird thud and some shuffling noises and then Winston replies, too loud, “I’m, uh, I’m good, thanks.”

“Okay,” Jess says, slowly. She glances over at Coach who widens his eyes at her, then goes back to get the popcorn out of the microwave. Nick can smell that she’s burned it, because Jess likes burnt popcorn because sometimes she is terrible. He is going to tell her this, like he does every time they have popcorn, when Schmidt interrupts him, saying like he’s been thinking about it for awhile now, “So, the thing about Nick _is_ that if he were a girl, I would not date him.”

Nick turns to glare at him.

“I think I would be _charming_ ,” he says.

“You’d be a mess,” Schmidt replies, “and not a hot one.”

“I think you’re being masochistic right now,” Nick says, “and, as a feminist, I won’t stand for it.”

“He means misogynistic,” Jess says, fondly, dropping down to sit next to Nick and offering him the bowl. Coach is already scrolling through a long list of movie covers that mostly feature attractive men in various states of undress.

“This one’s called _Longhorns_ ,” he says, “and I suspect that’s a metaphor for something.”

“Ooh, it looks like softcore cowboy porn,” Jess says. “Let’s watch it.”

“Why wouldn’t you date me if I was a girl?” Nick asks, abruptly, no longer resisting the urge to throw a kernel of popcorn at Schmidt’s head.

“A girl with your hygiene and general lack of manners?” Schmidt says. “You make a passable man, but you’d be a terror of a woman. A _terror._ ”

“So, basically you’re saying that you’d date Nick as a man,” Coach says.

They all stop to look at Schmidt, who opens and then immediately shuts his mouth.

“In the, uh,” he says, eventually, waving his hands in the air like he does when he’s trying to come up with words out of nothing. “In the hypothetical. In the hypothetical situation we have in front of us.”

“Sure,” Coach agrees. “Totally hypothetical.”

“This is all weird,” Nick says. “Put the movie on.”

The movie doesn’t make things less weird, especially because Schmidt keeps throwing Nick these sideways glances that, according to the movie, should be full of, like, secret longing and pent-up future gay orgasms, but mostly look like disgust. Two of the dude characters will kiss and then Schmidt will stare at Nick like he’s appraising what it would be like to kiss him like that—and clearly he’s not happy with the results.

When Schmidt briefly covers his eyes and groans during a mostly heavily-implied sex scene, Nick throws a handful of popcorn at him and says, in a tone that’s arguably too outraged for the situation, “If this is too disturbing for you, just let Coach do it instead!”

Is he offended that Schmidt doesn’t want to touch his junk? There’s a fair to good chance that he might be offended that Schmidt doesn’t want to touch his junk. His boys down under have done him nothing but good and they don’t deserve this disrespect—and from someone who has the nerve to call themselves his best friend.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Coach says.

“Then Winston can do it,” Nick continues, standing up and vaguely gesturing in the direction of Winston’s room before adding, weakly, “since. . .apparently Winston likes gay porn now.”

“IT’S JUST FOR RESEARCH,” Winston calls, from the other room.

Schmidt starts to say something, but Nick, suddenly a little too overwhelmed with the smell of burnt popcorn and the moaning noises from the TV and just everything that’s happening right now, power walks away into Jess’ room and slams the door behind him. Jess’ bed is familiar in a way that only kind of makes his heart hurt. It smells like vanilla body wash and Elmer’s glue and Tide and he buries his face in her sheets.

He ignores Jess when she comes in a few minutes later, walking lightly across the carpet like she doesn’t want to make too much noise before perching on the bed next to him.

“Hey, buddy,” she says, cautiously resting a hand on his back. “What’s crackin’.”

“I don’t know,” Nick says, voice muffled. “I just got weird about the fact that Schmidt finds the idea of kissing me so horrifying, and now I am getting weird about the fact that I got weird about that fact.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Jess says, quietly. “We could find somebody else—or, I mean, Ryan’s just really British, you know? He’s British, Nick. It does things to my lady business.”

“Coach won’t make out with me, will he?” Nick asks.

“No, no, I don’t think so,” Jess replies. 

Nick turns over to stare at the ceiling. Jess lays a hand on his knee and sits quietly with him until Schmidt walks into the room. He starts to say something, but Nick makes an erratic noise, lurches to his feet, and grabs Schmidt by the neck of his shirt.

“What—“ Schmidt starts, but Nick interrupts him by aggressively kissing him on the mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> detectivekatebishop on tumblr. come talk to meeeeee.


End file.
